Crafts
by MissMurdered-and-ELLE
Summary: Set in the same universe as Forever. Duo leaves Heero to babysit armed with construction paper and markers. 1x2x1. PWP-ish.
1. Heero

**Title:** Crafts

**Author:** Miss Murdered & ELLE

**Pairings/Warnings:** 1x2x1 and 4xR, m/m sex, light angst, sap, bad language

**Notes: **This one is for Daphie for encouraging a notion of Miss M's on Valentine's Day that ELLE saw all too easily. ;-P

* * *

**Heero**

There are certain things you hear over and over again in therapy that are nearly impossible to actually apply to your daily life. For me, one of those things is to immerse myself in ordinary moments. When over half your life consisted of tense, high-risk situations that require an incredible amount of concentration on multiple data points in order to make quick decisions that could easily be life or death – well, downtime and the everyday monotony of simply living seemed somehow more difficult than battlefield negotiation. It was impossible not to focus on the extraneous details that most people habitually filter out – sometimes just walking down the street to the corner store was an exercise in madness. It was a constant calculation of every single person's threat level, where said threat might come from, how I was possibly going to respond without a weapon, shielding, or a team. There were plenty of times I just didn't feel up to it and stayed locked in the house for days. To be frank, sometimes downtime was torture.

And unfortunately I had a lot of downtime since re-enrolling in therapy. It was okay. I understood why Une made the decision to draw me back into tactics and training, presumably so I could spend more time focusing on myself without the stress of missions. And while having Duo sent off without me only added to my stress load, letting go of my intense need of the constant reassurance of his existence was what I was supposed to be working on. But I didn't have to like it – and I didn't. I wished I knew how he dealt with it. There were a lot of things I envied about him.

"Uncle 'Ro?"

I blinked and turned to look over at the little girl next to me, seeming entirely too small in Duo's over-sized office chair. Her bleach blond pigtails, ruddy cheeks, fair skin, and incredibly fine linen dress replete with ruffles and eyelets and little bows betrayed her heritage as one of Quatre and Relena's offspring.

"You are 'posed to make a picture."

I grunted a non-committal response and looked back at the plain blue piece of construction paper under my hands. The entire desk was covered in it, as well as safety scissors, glue, glitter, and markers. I didn't even know these things existed, really, outside of children's television shows I might've caught brief glimpses of in shitty hotel rooms with a plethora of skinemax channels to choose from until Duo came home with a bag of this stuff. Suffice to say I had never 'made a picture' of anything – at least not like this. Though once I did have a little notepad with blue lines Odin had given me where I sketched out interesting cars I had seen or copied technical diagrams of guns from manuals, it was inevitably lost and he never got me another one.

Then I looked back over at her collection – filled with flowers, animals, and crude depictions of ladies in what appeared to be expensive gowns – and felt perplexed. I had a good feeling that this was one of those times I was supposed to concentrate on the moment. Surely it was why Duo had left me here with Anastasia while he attended Quatre and Relena's security detail for their interview with the E-SUNBC. Maybe. To be fair I hadn't left the house in several days and I wasn't much feeling up to it today either and perhaps I was giving him less credit than he deserved. But this activity ended up being just as frustrating to me. Duo would've been better suited to something like this. I was inadequate.

"You should make a picture of uncle Duo."

She was back to happily coloring on her piece of paper and the way she said it was almost as if she was just making an off-handed suggestion. I frowned. That would be just like Relena.

"Why?" I couldn't help but ask, seeing as she was the resident expert at this activity and I was a genuinely confused.

Then Anastasia turned to me and gave me a look that could've come straight from her mother – and probably had a time or two. Though, it could've been worse – it could've been a look from her father.

"Because you love him. Duh."

I swear she almost rolled her eyes at me but I didn't really mind. This information was at least somewhat useful to me.

"You draw pictures of people you love?" I asked, honestly curious, and she turned back to the picture she was working on, one finger pointing to the people in the picture.

"Yeah – it's mommy, daddy, and me. I love them."

It was a crude representation, I'll say that, only resembling Quatre, Relena, and herself in the vaguest of ways, but I understood what she was getting at. They were all holding hands and had hearts colored in around them.

"I see," I replied, contemplating the picture, not quite sure what a drawn picture of Duo and I holding hands with rudimentary representations of hearts would mean to anyone.

But then I had an idea.

I was fairly experienced with drawing technical schematics. Much of my time with Doctor J involved tracing them over and over again until I developed memorization techniques based on typical archetypes. I had never found much use for that particular skill set outside of missions, but it was oddly comforting to use those skills for something outside of monotonous recall.

Therefore my drawing was obviously far less primitive than hers, but in many ways no less meaningful. And Anna watched me with half an eye as I worked, offering color suggestions and where I should put glitter. It was a little ridiculous given the subject matter, but I acquiesced to her superior knowledge of this activity, which I wouldn't even be participating in without her guidance, and indulged her whims.

And actually, it was fairly relaxing, using this skill for such a mundane task. That in and of itself surprised me – typically I couldn't cope with attempting to apply skills I considered military to civilian settings, finding it difficult to let go of ingrained training and taking the activity too seriously. But Anna's suggestions were preposterous and kept me focused on how inconsequential the task truly was. If it were up to me, on my own however, I might've struggled more, becoming mono-focused on every tiny detail. As it was, pouring silver glitter into the grating on Deathscythe's chest was hardly a very accurate representation.

Although somehow the addition of it to Duo's hair seemed impossibly more accurate as I considered the way the light had hit it that day, the last time I had seen him after the Barton Rebellion before I left on my ill-fated quest for self-discovery. I'm sure he didn't even see me standing there in the Preventer hangar bay, hidden in the darkness of the warehouse, watching him standing atop his Gundam for the last time. We'd hardly said three words to each other since I was discharged from the hospital but really – what was there to say? The war was over. We were no longer comrades – none of us were. Wufei had the right idea, leaving immediately afterward. Drawing out the inevitable only made it more difficult. Not that I had had much of a choice but still, these other boys were the closest thing I'd ever had to friendship, the war a purpose, and now I had nothing.

Duo seemed reluctant too, hesitant to take that final flight, leaning into the helmet of Deathscythe as if trying to comfort a friend on death row. Trowa and Quatre had already left for the detonation site, I had seen them blaze across the horizon as I stepped into the bay, but Duo was just like me – he had nothing to go back to once this was over and he just needed another minute.

"Well, you'll have to practice," Anastasia told me with a heavy sigh as she studied my work with critical blue eyes, much like her father's.

I blinked and looked down at my nearly finished handiwork and I suppose for a child it was too precise, not fanciful enough, no emotion – but to me I saw everything so clearly it was like being there again and while I make an attempt to live without regret, I still wonder what would've happened had I gone to their detonation site too – had I asked him where he was going then.

"I guess you'll just have to come back," I offered and though I'm sure Duo could've made it sound better – less cold, more genuine – she still smiled at me.

"And maybe uncle Duo can help."

I was nodding my head in agreement when I heard the door downstairs open and Duo's warm voice filter down the hall to the office, in deep conversation with our friends. Suddenly, I was embarrassed of my picture and slid it under the other construction paper as Anna gathered up her own drawings and hopped off the chair, holding out her hand for mine to go and meet her parents.


	2. Duo

**Duo**

I guess you could say both me and 'Ro were babysitting, you know? Security detail for Quat and 'Lena was not like "real" Prev work and I took the job as they tended to request little old me when they could – the reassuring presence of an old friend, I guess, when they spent so much of their lives surrounded by anonymous dudes in black suits. And maybe I'd spoken to Quat recently, checking up on us after Heero's whole "taken out of the field" thing and mentioned that 'Ro needed something to do that didn't involve him just sitting on a damn laptop and doing some fucking analysis or whatever. So maybe I'd engineered this a little. Maybe I'd been a sneaky little shit but, hey – Heero hadn't been outta the house since his last therapy session and he was being a little distant and I didn't know how the fuck to help him. We hadn't even damn touched for days and I was kinda feeling helpless. So I called in backup.

Five year old back up. Anastasia Darlian-Winner walked down the stairs as the conversation about the interview stopped, dragging Heero with her, her little hand clasped around his. She was 'Ro's goddaughter and with the busy schedule of her parents, we didn't get to see her a whole lot. But unlike their own privileged backgrounds, Quat and 'Lena had tried to make sure that Anna wasn't surrounded by maids and nannies or whatever so when they were doing a joint interview together for E-SUNBC, there was no one to look after her. Except uncle 'Ro, which he'd accepted the duty with only a slight hesitation. I knew he'd wanted to say something about how I was better with her, that I was the fun one, you know, being that I hadn't grown up or something. But instead, he consented and I could see as she dragged him that maybe his overly dark mood had been lightened a little. A cute as shit five year old can kinda do that.

She dropped his hand as she saw her parents and the squeals of "mommy and daddy" were kinda a little high pitched as she ran into her father's arms first, Quatre picking her up to kiss her on the cheek as she waved pieces of construction paper in her arms.

"Me and uncle 'Ro made pictures."

I glanced over to him as she spoke, as Quatre and Relena looked at the pictures in her hand, and Heero leaned a little against the wall and raised an eyebrow in answer. The excited chatter continued at a speed that even I can't talk at as she explained the last few hours to her parents.

"And I drawed flowers and hearts and pretty dresses like mommies and... and and – and uncle 'Ro drew uncle Duo and – and we used glitter!"

Both of her parents kept their eyes on their daughter and I saw the soft smiles they had, observing how Quatre put her down and Relena knelt beside her, adjusting her dress and her hair as she spoke.

"We need to go home so thank your uncle for looking after you, Anna."

And with Relena's instruction, she bounded towards Heero, hugging his legs tightly, and I saw his little inhale of shock at the overt display of affection until he ran his fingers over her hair and leaned down to kiss her forehead.

"Thank you, uncle Heero," she said, formally, and then ran back to her parents, grabbing Quatre's outstretched hand.

"And thank you, Heero," Relena said, her eyes meeting his. "I'm glad she could be with family rather than with someone she doesn't know."

"Anytime," he murmured and with a few more goodbyes, and a hug for me from Anna, I closed the door on the Darlian-Winners and was undoing the black tie from around my neck as I went in search of where Heero had gone.

It didn't take much investigation on my part, finding him in our office, and I leaned against the door as I finished undoing the material from my neck. The desk, usually covered in computer parts or Preventer files was now covered in paper, glue, glitter, pens and all the shit I had bought the first time I'd known we were going to be given the responsibility to care for Anna at times. My decision was tactical as my theory was that it was better to do arts and crafts than tea parties and dollies. The image of either me or 'Ro having a tea party with dolls kinda made my head explode so this seemed a better option. Don't ever accuse me of not thinking through shit properly.

He was beginning to put the stuff away as I walked across the room and he turned, paper and markers in his hand. It was then my eyes zeroed in on something on the desk, a blue piece of construction paper hiding most of the picture but I could see the foot and I reached for it, hearing a muffled "no" but it was too late for that as I picked up the paper underneath, looking at what he'd created.

"Holy shit," I murmured as I saw a perfect rendering of Deathscythe. Full body. All the damn details. Me stood on the shoulder. Yeah, there was the addition of glitter that my old buddy would probably not approve of and all but it was there.

"Anna said I had to do something I loved," he said, his eyes avoiding mine and shit, when he was like this – unsure, still, after all these fucking years together – my heart damn melted.

"Yeah? Me and 'Scythe?"

He nodded and I put down the picture and reached for him, reaching to place my hands on his waist, feeling the soft fabric of his t-shirt and the steel of his muscles underneath.

"It was the days after," he started and then swallowed, "after… after the Barton Rebellion and you were going to the detonation site."

"Fuck, I hated that day."

"I know. I've been thinking about then a lot. The wars." He stalled and I saw a little knit of brows that indicated he was thinking too damn much and I ran my hands gently up his sides. "I miss it still."

"Me too."

"I miss feeling useful. Important."

And it became damn clear then as I knew he was fucking struggling with therapy and I hated that it was compulsory for him as hey, I'm not the most sane individual and I slipped by – my charm and general sunny disposition disguising the shit that went on in my head – and I moved my hand up to his face, my thumb rubbing off a little patch of glitter that had ended up on his cheek. It reminded me of seeing him with oil on his face from working on his Gundam all those damn years ago and it made something in my chest hurt far too fucking much as I remembered.

"'Ro, you are damn useful – shit, maybe you ain't in the field but you don't need to hold a gun or pilot a fucking Gundam to be useful."

"Duo –"

"No," I interrupted. "You don't think I miss feeling like that? That these shitty missions never match up to the wars and nothing ever does. Shit – the only thing that has ever made me feel as high as piloting Deathscythe is you."

As he was, the only time my adrenalin was as high, the only thing that could make my heart beat too damn fast and the only thing that made me remember who I'd been – when I was a soldier, a hero, fucking Shinigami – was Heero.

He registered my words, his blue eyes intense, and I had little warning before his lips were on mine – his hands dropping the damn craft supplies to the floor as he grabbed hold of the back of my head, forcing me to meet his mouth. In my shock at the sudden change of mood, I gasped, his tongue thrusting in aggressively, fucking my mouth as a hand grabbed at my ass, pulling me as close as he could to him, my body instinctively grinding into his, my dick hardening at the friction.

Shit, his kiss was so damn good, so fucking hot and heavy, that I surrendered, just gripped him as tightly as he was holding onto me. And I closed my eyes, tried to remember to breathe as we ground our bodies together, doing the dance we'd done a thousand fucking times but still the only thing in my damn life that had ever been as intense as piloting, as fighting – the only thing that was this good. Us. Together. Me and 'Ro.

His hand was in my suit pants before I damn knew it, his fist around my cock and I panted, slipping my lips away from his mouth as he nipped at my jaw, my cheek, my throat, licking and biting and tasting me. He dropped to his knees, pulling down my pants and boxers, and wrapped his lips around the head of my dick, leaving me breathless and mumbling some expletives and his name as he bobbed quickly up and down as his fingers teased my balls and then further back, a pad of a finger there.

"'Ro – !"

I thought I was damn gonna fall over from the intensity – the way he was going down on me, the touch of his fingers – and he backed off then, looked up at me sitting back on his heels, his eyes dark and his lips wet.

"Too much?" he asked, a smirk on his face and I fell to my knees, grabbing at his hair and pulling him back towards me.

"Never," I answered, claiming his lips as mine, ravaging his mouth.

We fumbled out of enough clothes, our lips stuttering over each other's skin, finding the lube that we'd kept in one of the drawers and it didn't take long for me to be on my hands and knees on the floor, my head resting against the carpet and my ass in the air as he pounded into my body from behind, my hands in fists and my body rocking back into him at each thrust of his hips, a hand gripping my braid for some sorta reassurance as we fucked. It was quick, intense, his hand tugging my cock in a way he damn knew would bring me off as he slammed into me, his dick hot and hard and so fucking deep that I'd lose my mind if we lasted much longer.

But fuck, I didn't as he hit that damn spot with practiced skill and his hand tugged me a few more times, sending me spiralling, cum splashing onto the carpet and his hand as I came. He grunted, a soft "fuck" escaping his lips and I felt him shudder and the warm feeling of his release inside.

"Fuck," I panted as we separated, me turning onto my back and lying on the floor, him joining me a few moments later with a sated sigh.

I glanced over, chuckled at how we both looked, me in most of suit but now pretty damn dishevelled and him in his t-shirt and nothing else. At the craft supplies scattered over the floor. At the glitter on his cheek. I leaned over to him, brushed more off him and gently kissed his lips.

"You will always be damn important. To me, to our friends, to Anna – don't ever forget it, babe."

He nodded, just a small incline of his head as he wound his hand into my braid, pulling me down to his mouth, our tongues twining and the foreplay beginning for another round. And I thought, yeah, maybe a few hours with Anna wasn't going to help his mood or help him deal with the intensity of his therapy but letting me in, letting me know the shit in his head, you know – that would.


End file.
